With the advent of endoscopic surgery, a significant number of minimally invasive instruments have been developed to facilitate these advantageous procedures. The term “endoscopy” is used to include many procedures where minimally invasive techniques and surgery is undertaken within a patient cavity or hollow organ, and may include arthroscopy, laparoscopy and percutaneous approaches to name just some.
As with many minimally invasive instruments, devices tend to have small elongate bodies designed to travel through a portal or through the patient's skin or tissue, into and out of a cavity. The smaller the elongate body, the less traumatic the instrument is to the patient and the better the potential procedural outcome. The challenge often faced is to design an endoscopic instrument that has useful function while being small.
Many suture graspers or suture retrievers are, in general terms forceps or graspers at the end of a long narrow tube, with fairly complicated mechanisms confined to a small envelope. These mechanisms may have multiple small linkages and components, limited in size. There is often a tradeoff as to the strength of an instrument of this nature and the physical size of it. It is considered desirable to have as small an instrument as possible, but strong enough to perform its function. Other tradeoffs in size significantly impact the instrument's complexity or cost and significantly compromise the instrument's durability. In addition in order to open the instrument jaws, tissue within the patient cavity may need to be moved out of the way. This may be difficult or cause unneeded trauma to the patient. Depending on the instrument's strength, surrounding tissue may also restrict the graspers from opening.